Too bad that wasn’t how it ended. The good guys win, big cheer from the crowd, and everybody lives happily ever after. But nothing was simple that winter, and opinions kept changing. One day everybody seemed to be in agreement, that it made sense to let Officer Kingman be in charge of food and firewood and security. The next day rumors would run through Harmony like poison, darkening our minds, and what Bragg was saying about a great conspiracy almost seemed to make sense.

Not Becca, though. She was for Kingman and never wavered. “We can’t be mean,” she would say. “Being mean is just plain wrong.”

Yeah, but. What about the Givens family, for example? Mr. and Mrs. Givens were bad drinkers, always fighting and complaining, and their two kids were even worse, being bullies and thieves. The entire family lived off the state, and naturally they didn’t have so much as a can of tomato soup in the cupboards. Or any source of heat—chopping wood is way too difficult when you’re drunk as a skunk by noon. So why should the rest of us have to chip in to help a family who couldn’t be bothered to help themselves? And it’s not like they were properly grateful for all the support. Old Man Givens was a foul-tempered drunk, and no matter what was provided, he always asked for more, and then cursed at those who helped.

Naturally they had a vicious pit bull, and that needed to be fed, too.

“I have a solution,” Gronk announced with his pie-eating grin. “Feed the goony Givens family to the pit bull. Problem solved.”

“If Bragg takes over, he just might do that.”

“Let him. Just for a day. My dad says he’d clean house.”

“I thought your dad thought Bragg was a nut bar.”

“My dad does think he’s a nut bar. He was joking.”

“You’re sure?”

Gronk thought about it. “Pretty sure,” he said.

Which made sense. No one was sure of anything, not even jokes. Food wasn’t really a problem, not yet, but fighting the cold was getting old. First thing we were all hoping for was that the power would come back on, and everything would return to normal. Second was for a January thaw, or, failing that, a few days above freezing, so we could all catch a breath and save a little firewood.

Mr. Mangano said we were caught in a polar vortex, basically cold air blowing down from the North Pole. Which was not unusual for this time of year and had nothing to do with the massive flare or the geomagnetic event or whatever it was that caused the big dark. School had been canceled for the time being—too many kids were needed at home. Plus the school building was like a freezer box—but Mr. Mangano started holding informal classes at the town hall a few hours each day for anybody who could get there.

Our first project? Build and maintain a weather station. The usual weather module didn’t work, of course, so our assignment was to “devise and explore more traditional options.” Which meant using an old-fashioned mercury thermometer—Gronk found it in the barn behind his house—and a wind indicator made of wire with tinfoil vanes, and an aneroid barometer. Gronk called it the hemorrhoid barometer, and Mr. Mangano laughed and said, “You have that in common with a hemorrhoid, Gary—you’re both pains in the butt, but at least you’re funny.”

Mr. Mangano said we were all suffering from aimless compass syndrome. He sort of meant it as a joke, but it was like Harmony no longer had a direction, or even an opinion that didn’t keep changing. Like we were all trying to find magnetic north, but we couldn’t because it no longer existed.

I know, I know—it didn’t make sense. That was the problem—nothing really made sense. And when nothing makes sense, crazy ideas like Bragg’s start to seem not so crazy after all.

*  *  *

Kingman made sure the town hall was heated and open to the public during the day. He said the suggestion came over his special crystal radio, from the state emergency people, who said it was important for every town to establish a central place to go and be neighborly, and that’s why the wide front door was kept off the latch.

Every day a new update would arrive over the crystal radio, and Kingman would post it on the pinup board beside the door.

Mostly announcements like New Hampshire residents unite to face difficult challenges and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials confirm that the massive power outage is under investigation by top scientists, and urge citizens to keep calm.

Gronk’s dad grumbled that he wouldn’t believe a thing FEMA said until they showed up and shoveled his sidewalk. But even he got a kick out of the New Hampshire Emergency Task Force Tip of the Day:

Make somebody smile. It warms the heart if not the hearth.

“Happy talk,” he said, but it made him smile, so I guess it worked.

*  *  *

Gronk and I happened to be in the town hall one afternoon, working on our weather station project, when we got an unexpected visitor. First thing we noticed was the cold breeze from the open door, and then came the clopping of hooves.

“Oh my cheese,” Gronk said under his breath. “It’s Bambi!”

The deer, which weighed maybe a hundred pounds, did not seem to be anywhere near as excited as we were. She clopped along between the tables and chairs, found an open space not too far from the stove, lay down with her long spindly legs folded, and promptly fell asleep.

“Bambi was a male,” I pointed out. “That’s a doe. A year or so old.”

“What do we do?”

“Let her sleep, I guess.”

“Someone will want to shoot it,” Gronk said, very matter-of-fact.

He had a point. This is the north country and hunting is what we do. Moose, deer, turkey, duck, bear—you name it, we shoot it. Rifle, shotgun, musket, bow, whatever gets the job done. Food for the freezer.

“Yeah, but why bother?” I said. “We’ve got more venison than we can eat before it goes bad. Besides, I’m not going to tell anybody, are you?”

Gronk shrugged. “Guess not.”

The deer stayed overnight and was waiting to leave when we opened the door early the next morning. Trotted lightly out of town, not in any particular hurry. Like it knew hunting season was over and assumed the rules would be enforced. Or maybe, Gronk said, it just needed a break from the cold.

Anyhow, it was kind of a cool thing. For a while I thought maybe the visiting deer was a sign that things would get better, that we could all get along.

Then Mom got sick, and everything changed.